1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method and system for the delivery and provision of professional services using an internet-based platform capable of sharing resources.
2. Background
The traditional market for professional services is highly fragmented and inefficient due to the varying and diverse expertise of the professionals and the industries they serve. Take for example, the legal industry. Lawyers are licensed in disparate jurisdictions and specialized in distinct fields. They have different levels of experience and operate at varying levels of competence. While large law firms are able to bring together various niche services providers to aggregate supply, they make up for only a fraction of the legal community and contribute to its rigid and hierarchical “old-school” nature.
Presently, the supply-side architecture of the legal services industry lags other industries. Lawyers use software applications for their billing, office and case management. However, the legal profession has not yet adopted the now available web-based technology to provide legal services to their clients. They also don't typically collaborate online with other lawyers throughout the entire deal process (from sourcing to final payment). While there are online databases such as Martindale-Hubble, these services do not allow for meaningful interaction, collaboration or transactions (i.e. the full legal experience). The problem is that they resemble more closely to an online phonebook than an interactive exchange where legal service providers and service requesters or consumers conduct business.
According to Thomson Research, consumers demand greater efficiency and transparency of online legal services. Consumers are frustrated with navigating an ever-increasing volume of legal information online as they are untrained or inexperienced in digesting this over-saturation of seemingly unrelated and fragmented data. Thomson Research also suggests that evaluating the credibility of legal information and legal professionals is equally difficult. The problem is that while consumers are being serviced in other industries via the Internet, the legal profession has lagged further behind.
An inefficient marketplace is typically manifested by a large variation in prices for a given quality of service. In the present system, a great majority of legal service providers charge their clients based on billing rates. They bill varying hours for the same product, with larger firms commanding the highest rates. Thus, for the same quality of legal service, the price of the work product can vary greatly.
For many lawyers, large percentages of revenue often lie within few customers. Loss of one major client can have significant repercussions. This is particularly evident for the thousands of long-tail/mid-tail providers, who have limited relationships and compete against larger counterparts with global reach. As a result, smaller firms and lawyers often lose new business because they can only service 60-80% of a client's needs. While these lawyers are more likely to adopt new technology, there have been no complete solutions to date for on-demand collaborations with the clients and other out-of-network legal professionals including assistants, paralegals, and consultants, in a virtual or online environment. Moreoever, there is a perceived drawback of online systems that one must contend with a reduced level of confidentiality, security and control. For litigators, there is the worry that it could mean a loss of attorney-client privilege.
Accordingly, there is a need for a secure platform that facilitates the formation and management of client and professional teams possessing the requisite talents for specific projects and the efficient collaboration of team members in a virtual or online workroom.